So, today was my first planned "fortnightly" session, after the initial phase of bi-weekly and then weekly treatments.
Getting through the 14 days was less fraught than I expected.
However... with today's being approximately the 20th (?) session... It was the first one that I would describe as a "negative" experience.
All the other ones have been filled with lots of positive feelings.
Today's session was weird... It felt weird, right from the very first moments... I remember thinking "Something's wrong with this batch of Ketamine" (because it was a new box from the pharmacy)... And it stayed that way for the whole session... Weird, uncomfortable, sort of anxious, trying to "ride it out" and waiting for it to be over...
About 10? or 15? minutes into it, I ended up pressing the "buzzer" for the nurse... And just told her that I wasn't having a very comfortable experience this time and whether she could check my blood pressure and pulse because due to the wooziness and fuzziness, I couldn't work out whether I was feeling crap "just" because it was negative emotions coming up... or whether there was some physical issue causing anxiety and distress... Literally couldn't tell one from the other in that state... I guess the way that sometimes people literally can't tell whether they're experiencing a panic attack or a heart attack... The effects of the Ketamine totally blurred that body/ brain divide and I couldn't tell one from the other...
The nurse seemed to think that my vital signs were fine and so that it didn't seem to be physical and tried to reassure me and told me to try and relax as best as I could... Which I did try to...
I was very grateful to have a) a buzzer, b) trained medical staff on hand, c) to be hooked up to a monitor measuring my vital signs, d) staff experienced and well-versed with the procedure so they know what to expect and how to deal with it...
I can definitely see how getting anxious during a session (or "trip") would lead to what people call a "bad trip"...
If negative/ distressing feelings arise, then it's easy to get scared/ panicky... And because you're totally incapacitated and disoriented and you can't tell what's coming from your body and what's coming from your brain... And because your sense of time is soooo skewed (a minute can feel like an hour) I can see how you could start feeling trapped and panicked inside the "trip" and if there's no kind, trained staff to reassure you and you're in it on your own or just have some stoned friends around... Then you could spiral into an intense panic attack *inside* the trip and it could be quite a harrowing experience...
Thankfully, I was spared that kind of escalation of the distress by the excellent safeguards described above. So, after some initial concern, I realised it was "just" negative emotions coming up but that everything else about the treatment session was "normal" and that it would be over before too long... I kept my eyes open this time, looking at the room to have a better sense of orientation and time and to be more grounded in reality... And it was kind of like waiting for an unpleasant dentist's appointment to be over... Not harrowing, but still "unpleasant".
Thankfully, both the nurse and the Dr were really great about it. Neither freaked out, both were really calm and supportive. After each session there's a 5 - 10 minute talk with the doctor, to discuss whether everything was okay, what effects were present during the treatment, how it's been impacting my depression between treatments, etc.
This time we naturally talked about the session feeling "negative" this time... And we both agreed that with the 3 hospital stays and surgery and an infected wound and a lung embolism where I came close to dying and had felt quite a bit of panic during the worst 48 hours of it... That those factors make it quite "natural" that my brain would have some negative emotions to process and that "my body feeling weird" would set off anxiety... So we've all agreed that a) it wasn't a big deal, b) it sort of was to be expected, c) that the staff dealt with it really well, d) that I'm not upset by the experience, e) it's normal for a small percentage of Ketamine treatment sessions to feel "negative" and f) to just wait and see how the next session goes...
While I very, very much hope that the next sessions will go back to feeling "good" again, it was also interesting to be exposed to my "negative" emotions and to be able to observe them (without it spiralling into a bad trip). I can't quite put it into words... It sort of felt like "facing my fears" in a good way... Sort of like doing exposure therapy and feeling stronger for having faced your fears, if that makes sense... Only that I sort of only half-faced them, I guess... Cos I literally did end up being scared that my body was malfunctioning again... So I was sort of half "in" the fear and only half facing/ observing it... But even that felt helpful in some way... Like it's part of a growth opportunity, or something like that....